Born in Ridgewood, NJ, David Van Tieghem started drumming with pots and pans on his kitchen floor. As a teenager, he taught himself to play drums, and then studied percussion with Justin DiCioccio, of NYC's LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts. He later attended Manhattan School of Music as a student of modern percussion pioneer Paul Price.

As a free-lance drummer and percussionist, he has worked with Steve Reich & Musicians, Laurie Anderson, Brian Eno & David Byrne, Arthur Russell, the Broadway musical "Smokey Joe's Café," the Manhattan Percussion Ensemble, Stevie Nicks, Jon Gibson, Talking Heads, Robert Fripp, Scott Johnson,Robert Gordon, Duran Duran, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Sergei Kuryokhin, Pink Floyd, Michael Oldfield, John Cale, Chris Spedding, Richard Peaslee, Twyla Tharp, Elliott Murphy, Nona Hendryx, Arto Lindsay, Bob Clearmountain, Jerry Harrison, Yoshiko Chuma & the School of Hard Knocks, Adrian Belew, Merce Cunningham, Graciela Daniele, Bill T. JonesArnie Zane Dance Company, the Big Apple Circus, Bill Laswell, Ned Sublette, Tony Williams, Lenny Pickett, Michael Nyman, David Moss, John Zorn, Anton Fier, the Golden Palominos, Robert Ashley, and Peter Gordon's Love of Life Orchestra, among others.

Since 1977 he has been presenting his solo percussion-theater performances in venues throughout the world, including Carnegie Hall, the Composers Showcase series and the Serious Fun! Festival at Lincoln Center, the Bottom Line, the Kitchen, the Knitting Factory, the Palladium, the Beacon Theater, P. S. 122, the Guggenheim and Whitney Museums, Danceteria, the Peppermint Lounge, and the Mudd Club in NYC, "Late Night with David Letterman," Nickelodeon, the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Wiltern Theater in LA, the Institute for Contemporary Art in Boston, the Milwaukee Art Museum, The Maine Festival, the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, the NY State Performing Arts Center in Albany, The Exploratorium in San Francisco, the Three Rivers Arts Festival in Pittsburgh, the New Music America Festivals in Washington, DC, Miami and New York, the NY State Council on the Arts New Music Network tour, the "Good Morning America" and "Ripley's Believe It or Not" TV shows, the Ambient Music Festival in Rome, the Herbst Festival in Austria, the Festival D'Automne in Paris, and several solo concert tours of Japan.

He has made several videos, but the one that got him the most fame was Ear to the Ground, in which he 'plays' New York City as a musical instrument, hitting anything and everything that makes a noise with his drumsticks as he dances through the city. Ear to the ground was premiered on PBS"s TV series Alive from Off-Center.

David has written musical scores for a number of movies and plays. He created the music for The Alchemedians by Bob Berkey and Michael Moschen, Working Girls, Penn & Teller's Invisible Thread, In Motion with Michael Moschen, The Withered Arm by Jennifer Cox, Shift by Kelly Anderson, long running Broadway play Night Must Fall, and 1991 movie The Frankenstein Complex. He has written music for and has performed in many commercials, including ones for Reebok, Playboy, Sony, Kodak, Nintendo, and The New Yorker.

David continues to produce live shows, albums and movie scores.

Discography

STRANGE CARGO (1989, Private MusicBMG) With Mark Egan, Lenny Pickett, and Scott Johnson

SAFETY IN NUMBERS (1987, Private MusicBMG) With Tony Levin, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Bill Buchen, and "Blue" Gene Tyranny

IN-A-GADDA-DA-VIDA (1986, Wide Angle/TwinTone)

THESE THINGS HAPPEN - REMIXES (1984, Warner Bros.) With Peter Gordon

THESE THINGS HAPPEN (1984, Warner Bros.) With Peter Gordon, Ned Sublette, and Rebecca Armstrong

David is working on a new album entitled THROWN FOR A LOOP. Its projected release date is sometime in 2002.

sources: A packet on Van Tieghem from one of his live shows in Kingston, NY and www.vantieghem.com

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